In reflecting upon my experience at McGill, it would be fair to say that much of it was true to form; the share of good and bad professors, the very real labyrinthine bureaucracy, and the infamous campus politics. In some sense, all of that is usual. In other ways, it[Read More…]
Articles by Abraham Moussako
From the brainSTEM: Net Neutrality
For the past few years, Network neutrality has been one of the more under-the-radar issues in the American national debate.
Pop Rhetoric: A missed opportunity for The Newsroom
For those convinced of the self-absorption of the American “media elite,” the hoopla that surrounded the debut of Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom in 2012 was an excellent case-in-point.
From the cheap seats: A damp, Impact-less performance
Major League Soccer is hard to compare to anything—one might say it stands alone, but in the least superlative sense possible.
Students debate military research on campus at policy reform forum
The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) hosted a forum on military research on campus last Thursday. Led by SSMU VP University Affairs Claire Stewart-Kanigan and VP External Amina Moustaqim-Barrette, the event aimed to solicit student perspectives on campus research policies prior to McGill’s review of its policy on the[Read More…]
Split identities
Despite differences in healthcare, politics, and even serving sizes, Canada and the United States have a lot in common. They share a continent, many aspects of culture, and—thanks to strong flows of product and people—citizens. As a Canadian university that attracts a large influx of American students every year, McGill[Read More…]
To talk about race, one must listen
Recently I happened to find myself in conversation with a friend over the then-white-hot situation in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, where the killing of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of local police erupted—thanks to a perfect storm of factors—to become an international flashpoint.
Quebec Superior Court rules against Tariq Khan’s interim injunction to be reinstated as SSMU President
The Quebec Superior Court ruled against issuing the interim injunction filed by Tariq Khan that would have restored Khan as the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) President, following a hearing last Friday. Because the President’s term began on June 1, the interim injunction was filed in order to decide[Read More…]
Saying so-long to student satire
After two-and-a-half years of image-macro-based mockery and outrage—some genuine, some feigned—Daniel Braden, the man behind the “McGill Memes” Facebook page and Tumblr microblog, is graduating from McGill and moving to Boston to work on a congressional campaign. This week, the Tribune sat down with Braden to take stock of the[Read More…]
Our fragmented campus
A term we often hear from time to time—sometimes in the pages of this newspaper—is the idea of the “McGill Community.” While this works best as a tidy phrase to lump together disparate stakeholders—students, faculty, employees, the administration, and alumni—in most instances, there is no such “McGill community,” so much[Read More…]
Transitioning from CEGEP
With its pride of place in the heart of downtown Montreal, McGill is often seen as a global university, not solely a Quebec or Montreal institution. However, students from the province of Quebec make up a large portion of the university, comprising over two thirds of Canadian undergraduates and just[Read More…]
Pizza Navona
A fair amount of takeout pizza in Montreal—certainly from establishments along St. Laurent—can best be described in degrees of mediocrity. While there is an abundance of respectable, acceptably priced fast food in this city, pizza is a niche in a state of indifference. A market consumed by mediocre, standardized product[Read More…]
On tomatoes
The players are far from unknown. There’s the tomato: a round, plump fruit, often confused for a vegetable (although definitely a vegetable for taxation purposes, according to a 19th century U.S. Supreme Court ruling). Then there’s McGill University: a Canadian research institution with global renown and an annual late-August set of welcome exercises for new students.
Useful at a better speed
Inter-city rail in North America is often far below the standards of other developed nations. In many parts of the continent, notably those outside of the Eastern Seaboard and select other hubs, rail service simply isn’t a competitive alternative to driving or flying. The Montreal-New York corridor, spanning two major[Read More…]
Understanding the role of social media
With the rise of social networking as a viable medium for debate, political messaging has changed the way we view public opinion. Companies, for example, have strategies for increasing “engagement” and “brand awareness” on social networks, and media organizations often troll Facebook and Twitter for everything from sources to story[Read More…]
University Governance: Students and Stakeholders
McGill University, like all universities, has an administrative superstructure and an academic structure overlaid one on the other. As with many universities, this superstructure is generally ignored by much of the student body. The spate of recent controversies over the administration and student input, from the recent course cuts to[Read More…]
Cuts and an inconsequential conversation
At the beginning of last term, I wrote that this year would—hopefully—be free of the sort of acrimonious student politics that characterized 2011-2012 at McGill. Recent events have put the lie to that hope. While much of the attention on campus is currently centred around The Daily’s fee referendum, a[Read More…]
Divest what? The flawed thinking behind university divestment
A large part of the difference in the policy prescriptions that we see from the Left and Right can be attributed to the logic they apply to political and policy problems. In terms of social issues, we see that those on the Right tend to frame problems within an absolutist[Read More…]
When, if ever, can speech be sanctioned?
Is there free speech on our campus? That depends on who’s talking. According to the libertarian Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), when it comes to protecting controversial speech, McGill University—like most Canadian universities—fails miserably. In the wake of these accusations, we must rethink the boundaries we set between offensive[Read More…]
Democracy’s weakest link: uninformed voters
As the presidential election campaign in the United States reaches the home stretch, one thing has become abundantly clear—barring any truly egregious mistakes by either campaign, this election is going to be particularly close. Thanks to the quirks of the Electoral College, the results in what are popularly known as[Read More…]
Speech and the Internet: Does the Internet create or merely enable bad behavior?
The increasing influence of the Internet over the past two decades has been frequently accompanied by periodic bouts of public soul-searching about what effect it is having on society. Over the past week, two major incidents have questioned the Internet’s role in enabling unacceptable behaviour. The first was the tragic[Read More…]
What should a university degree represent?
Over the past few years, there has been an intensifying debate over the role of university education—whether universities are institutions of pure learning, or simply a place to acquire a credential after completing a certain amount of coursework. Though the topic has generated a fair amount of discussion about what[Read More…]
Why are American universities so expensive?
We have seen over the past year in Quebec that the issue of university tuition can be incredibly polarizing. Indeed, in much of the debate over the recent planned tuition hikes, anti-hike activists drew ominous comparisons not only with the higher rates in the rest of Canada, but with the[Read More…]
Moral Superiority and Student Politics: on the sanctimoniousness of student radicalism
As this term progresses, many of the usual routines of the year are fast returning to focus. Due dates are beginning their slow, inexorable evolution from abstractions printed on syllabi to concrete time commitments and nights of lost sleep. Libraries are, again, beginning to fill with students, and class schedules[Read More…]
Safe space strife
The latest flashpoint of tension at Queer McGill (QM) revolves around the dismissal of Brian Keast, the former treasurer of the club, after an equity complaint filed by Libby Bouchard, the club’s Political Action Co-ordinator. The complaint alleged that Keast, an executive of the group, had violated QM’s anti-transphobia mandate.[Read More…]
In defence of tuition hikes: why frozen tuition is folly
This week, students will decide whether an important fee will be raised, in the words of those who support this increase, to “maintain the current level” of service. The fee increase I refer to, of course, is the SSMU dental plan. Not really. But my point is that, like this[Read More…]
The danger of the anecdote
The anecdote has its place. It is sometimes the only way to illustrate stark, numbing statistics to a reader. The problem with the anecdote, however, is when it takes over from hard data and honest analysis. In such cases, the anecdote becomes a pernicious a tool for lazy, deceptive, and[Read More…]
Student Democracy: The agency of the few
The SSMU General Assembly last week was the latest installment of an institution at McGill showcasing both the theoretical promise of direct democracy and the reality of its own illegitimacy. The theoretical promise comes from the reasonable idea that the student body of a university should have a say in[Read More…]
Should journalism ever express opinions?
These past few years have been a time of tumult for most journalistic organizations. Various forms of modern media, such as the Internet and cable television, they have challenged the dominance of print and network television, and have also challenged the orthodoxy of whether “the news” should express an opinion.[Read More…]
To walk or to wait
Jaywalking is a practice that is only nominally illegal in most North American cities. However, Montreal seems to be taking a different approach. The Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) has begun its annual pedestrian safety campaign. Like most measures by government to raise “awareness” of a[Read More…]